The scaffolding is going up around the walls of Chatham House in London — we shall not see it dismantled again in our lifetime. Not even if the Royal Institute of International Affairs says it is doing no more than a repaint job.

According to a fresh report from inside the building, issued on June 4, it’s time to strike at Russia with “defensive strategic communications and media support…promoting truthful accounts of Western policies and values… through EU and NATO cooperation.”

In the City of London this is known as talking one’s book. On Madison Avenue, in New York City, it’s called advertising. Chatham House is applying for money for former British government officials to write reports to US, British and NATO intelligence agencies for the job of winning over, or neutralizing, those who are victims of Russian disinformation because they don’t believe what the US, British and NATO intelligence agencies have been telling them. The more incredible this proposition sounds, the more urgently Sir Roderic Lyne and Sir Andrew Wood and several other Chatham House apparatchiki say they need the money.

Entitled “The Russian Challenge”, the Chatham House report runs to 72 pages. Signing it as authors are six associates of the house — Keir Giles, Philip Hanson (below, left), Roderic Lyne (centre), James Nixey, James Sherr and Andrew Wood (right). Except for Nixey, the authors have held British government positions related to security, intelligence and war. Hanson says he served for a time at the US government radio, Radio Liberty. Lyne and Wood were British ambassadors to Russia between 1995 and 2004; they are also on retainer for companies doing business in Russia. Their report can be read here.

Propaganda – that’s to say, the word — appears twice, meaning what the Russian government claims. Thus: “Patriotism and propaganda may for a while obscure economic failure (Putin has taken to making Orwellian boasts: ‘Our produce is of course much better and healthier’ but they do not put bread on the table.” And: “The West should also explain its policies towards Russia, including of course those affecting Ukraine, to Russia’s post-Soviet neighbours – and to China. They deserve to hear directly how the West understands the position, and how Western countries propose to proceed. At the least, Russia’s propaganda effort needs to be balanced in this way.”

The word false appears six times. It’s a synonym for Russian. It refers to things Russians believe or do, or else want others to think they mean. For example: “By either undermining the will or support for deterrent measures, or creating an entirely false impression that Russia is justified in its actions, Russia adjusts key variables in the security calculus, reducing the risk inherent in any future assertive action against its neighbours”. And: “The current Kremlin may want to develop the false promise of a separate, self-sufficient and introverted Russia dominating the former Soviet space.” And: “As noted over the Russian interpretation of NATO’s intentions in Crimea, such false perceptions are nevertheless a reality to the Russian leadership.”

Truth, the word again, is much more frequent, appearing 12 times. It means what Chatham House authors say it is. For example: “[President Vladimir] Putin is a fundamentally anti-Western leader whose serial disregard for the truth has destroyed his credibility as a negotiating partner.” “Western societies put faith in their own independent media to arrive at and report the truth thanks to their relative freedom.” And: “while truth is supposed to be a fundamental requirement of Western communications strategies, Russian campaigns need not even remotely resemble the truth to be successful.”

The capstone of the case for Chatham House truth against Russian falsehood appears in this analysis of the transformation of Crimea in March 2014, followed by the destruction in eastern Ukraine of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 on July 17, 2014. According to Keir Giles, “Western media organizations were entirely unprepared for a targeted and consistent hostile disinformation campaign organized and resourced at state level. The result was an initial startling success for the Russian approach in the early stages of operations in Crimea, where reports from journalists on the ground identifying Russian troops did not reach mainstream audiences because editors in their newsrooms were baffled by inexplicable Russian denials….A key example of this approach followed the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17. Four days after the crash, by which time it was already clear that Russia held ultimate responsibility for the tragedy, the Russian Ministry of Defence held a press conference to present explanations absolving Russia.231 The scenarios presented were diverse and mutually contradictory, and did not stand up to the briefest examination by experts with even basic knowledge of the aircraft and missile systems claimed to have been involved.232.” (See page 47.)

Read this again slowly: “four days after the crash…it was already clear that Russia held ultimate responsibility for the tragedy.”

In footnote number 232 evidence should have followed for readers to understand the expertise leading Chatham House to its conclusion so swiftly after the aircraft downing. But footnote 232 turns out to be a selfie. Giles (right) is citing a 10-paragraph posting on the Chatham House website on July 24, 2014, by himself. This summarizes two widely publicized briefings by US and Russian intelligence, adding no evidence from another source, and concluding with the opinion: “The story of the crash presented by Russian domestic media is unrecognizable from what has been established as fact so far… In the case of Flight MH17, the truth is the last thing Moscow needs.” A box for feedback is provided, but it is empty.

In the war of truth against falsehood the case of MH17 is important. But Giles and Chatham House are saying the truth was “already clear” after they had investigated from their London headquarters for 96 hours. When asked to clarify his expertise and evidence Giles turns out to be less than clear. Chatham House reports Giles as starting his “career…in aviation in the early 1990s, working with Soviet military and paramilitary aircraft in Crimea.” The Chatham House spokesman says he doesn’t know if Giles had service rank nor in what organization he served.

Giles explains his involvement in Soviet military aircraft came through “a private company called Russ-Sky. I was its co-director.” When asked what organization engaged Russ-Sky, and to whose air force, Russian or Ukrainian, the aircraft belonged, Giles replied: “(1) none, and (2) neither! They still had Soviet stars and CCCP registrations.”

Russ-Sky is listed as having been founded on March 4, 1992, by Giles and Anthony Christopher Batchelaar. It later dissolved. According to Giles, he was working on military aircraft in Crimea before 1992, but he refuses to say if he was engaged by the Ukrainian air force or by someone else. He denies he was working with the Russian military command on Crimea.

Giles went on to be an analyst at the UK Defence Academy, reporting through the Joint Services Command and Staff College to military operations and intelligence units. His unit claims credit for “notable predictions…the succession of Vladimir Putin by Dmitriy Medvedev as Russian president, and the August 2008 war between Russia and Georgia.” When Giles’s unit was disbanded inside the UK government, the work was outsourced to his private consultancy called the Conflict Studies Research Centre.

In military recruitment it’s standard operating procedure for soldiers to be tested for their physical and cognitive capacities. Flat-footedness is a disqualifier, so is blindness. If a soldier was as clear-sighted as Giles claims to be on the MH17 crash, would his vision qualify him for combat? This isn’t an argument over what Giles says the causes were. It’s a diagnosis of the visibility of the evidence of what isn’t clear, almost a year after the event. For more of that, read this.

Chatham House is making the case that it is fit for service in information warfare against Russia. Intelligence analysts working for commercial due diligence companies in London say the Giles report is blind. A well-known London banker who has been asked to raise corporate money for Chatham House says the institution is discrediting itself on Russia. “It should stand above this sort of thing,” he adds.

The institutional motto at the close of “The Russian Challenge” is: “Independent thinking since 1920”. The date at the end is eccentric — how truthful is the adjective at the start? Independent of what?

In the UK and US tax codes, Chatham House is a charity. In the organization’s chart of its revenues, 30% comes from government and another 26% is paid by corporations with national affiliations. For the full list of names, click to open. The Russian Embassy in London is one of the listed members.

Just over half the income of the organization is raised for area or topic-specific research, producing reports like “The Russian Challenge”. Lyne is both a co-author of the report, and deputy chairman of the Chatham House Council; that makes him one of the senior executives in charge of governance, money-raising, and expenditure. Lyne is the only Russia hand on the organization’s executive.

Lyne has money-making ties of his own to Russia. He is a non-executive director of the goldminer, Petropavlovsk Plc, which pays him £92,000 per annum; he also supervises the remuneration of everyone else in the company. Lyne has been on the Petropavlovsk board, or its Aricom Plc predecessor, since 2006. Over that period the London Stock Exchange-listed company has dwindled in market value from more than £15 billion to less than £200 million today. The catastrophic loss of market confidence has been accompanied by a series of controversies which can be followed here. As a non-executive director ultimate responsibility isn’t Lyne’s. For an exercise in truth-telling which Lyne is endorsing at Chatham House, the Petropavlovsk prospectuses deserve close examination.

A review of UK and US nationals sitting on the boards of Russian corporations since the introduction of sanctions against Russia puts Lyne among several dozen who continue to demonstrate their, er independence of the sanctions policy. In his Chatham house report, Lyne says he’s in favour of “their duration as well as severity. Until the issue of the violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity is fully addressed, sanctions should remain in place.”

For financing Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia programme, several types of sponsors are identified on the website. Some subscribe to attend events to rub shoulders with those with whom they do business, or would like to do business. The heavier hitters, though, are George Soros’s Open Society; the RAF Molesworth airbase; the UK Foreign Office; five international oil companies; and AIG, the US insurance company. AIG’s record in the truth-telling department is more famous than most because it was investigated by the US Congress.

RAF Molesworth is an interesting sponsor for Chatham House to have in light of the Giles report’s evidence on what caused the MH17 crash. It sounds like an airbase, which once it was when the enemy was the Germans. Now the enemy is the Russians, and RAF Molesworth is a nonflying, warfighting branch of US and NATO intelligence.

Molesworth, according to the official literature, is home to three Major Command (MAJCOM) branch sites: the United States European Command (USEUCOM) Joint Intelligence Operations Center Europe Analytic Center (JAC), United States Africa Command (USAFRICOM) Intelligence and Knowledge Directorate-Molesworth (J2-M), North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Intelligence Fusion Centre (IFC). The role of the JAC is to process and analyse military information from a variety of sources for the benefit of the United States and NATO. The JAC reports to the Director of Intelligence (J2), Headquarters, United States European Command, in Stuttgart-Valhingen, Germany.

In January the BBC reported a Pentagon plan to end its RAF Molesworth lease and move communications and flight support units closer to the war fronts. It isn’t clear where the intelligence operations will be deployed next. For waging the good war, at a good price, Chatham House is reporting its hand is up.

John Helmer is the longest continuously serving American correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties.